Today there are 3D
printing service website like Shapeways,
Ponoko and Sculpteo that can very inexpensively
print and deliver an object from a digital file that you simply upload to their
website. You can even sell your 3D designs on their website.

MakerBot's Thingiverse is a thriving design
community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things.

Sunday, 13 December 2015

Imagine customer is looking at
smart LED TV in the electronic shop's window, and he/she gets a text with 10% off on that same TV, immediately purchases it & then pays
automatically using online account.

Or even have you noticed, when you walk
near Apple store, you get their notifications on your smartphone?

It is revolutionizing the customer experience with in-store
analytics, proximity marketing, indoor navigation and contact less payments.

Beacons are small devices working
on tiny Bluetooth low energy (BLE) radio signal that can be received and interpreted
by an app on smartphones. This can work within 50-70 meters of a beacon device.
No scanning necessary. In addition, this system can pinpoint where your
customer is in the store micro location and push specific information for
them.

Big players in Beacon
technology are Estimote & Apple, while major retailers like Macys,
Taget, JC Penney are using beacons for Cross-Sell.

It is not distant, when as soon
as a customer walks in to the store, your sales staff will know their name,
what product categories they shop most, the items they browsed last time but
didn’t purchase and what their spending habits are to give them personalized
attention.

Saturday, 5 December 2015

Today we
are living on our smartphone. There is an app for everything. Share a
photo or music, call a cab, order food, post a status, check-in at any location
or track a flight.

Our lives
are revolving around all such apps and we are using them fluently without even
noticing what goes behind this. In reality to do all this, the smartphone has to
connect with service provider’s application servers via APIs. Many businesses
are using APIs to deliver the services we require today.

In the age
of digital transformation, APIs enable access to functionality and data from
existing applications to the new digital business application helping in
transformation. They are changing the way businesses interact with customers
and partners with speed and agility.

We visit Klout to see your social media score
calculated from your digital footprint

Use Instagram or
Flickr to post your vacation photos

Use apps like
Uber, paytm, Waze, WeatherNow, Booking.com for various activities all over the
day

Buffer &
Hootsuite like schedulers using APIs for posting on multiple social media
accounts

Citibank
follows the API first approach for digital transformation & had launched Citi Mobile Challenge, a virtual
accelerator that invites developers from around the world to build innovative
solutions.

MasterCard
is another example of a financial services institution that has embarked on an
API-based approach to digital transformation. With its Developer
Zone portal and open APIs.

Sunday, 29 November 2015

Today whole
economy is changing into Digital economy and disrupting all the respective
markets and industries. Businesses are shifting from selling physical things to
digital things.

Just to
take an example of Music industry – in old days we had to go to store to buy LP
records, then came cassettes and CDs which were then disrupted due to introduction
of MP3 format in 1990s. Later came IPod/IPhone and people could carry their
music with them. Spotify further changed this to streaming music, so now you
don’t have to download music at all.

The song
collection on Spotify is so large that you will need a lifetime to listen to
all of them. That is where Spotify started using machine learning, to identify
and predict what a person would like to listen next.

The main
driver for this change was “Customer behavior”. With flexibility of anytime,
anywhere any information, customers became more aware of the products than
manufacturers. Companies need to understand this and recognize the trends, to
predict customer behavior.

With
exponential growth in data from people and things, a key to survival is to use
machine learning & make that data more meaningful, more relevant to enrich
customer experience.

It took a
while for phones to become smart phones.
But now machines can become smarter machines faster, by combining the
Internet of Things, machine learning, and data insights, with addition of people
and devices.

In order to
understand all the data coming our way, machine learning algorithms will be
required. These are various techniques
that allowed machine to learn on its own. Algorithms will also
significantly influence the Internet of Things. Without them, the IoT will not
even become possible! Gartner predicts that 25 billion
connected devices will be in use by 2020.
All these devices will be connected to business processes as well as
billions of smartphones. This will generate massive amounts of data that need
to be analyzed to understand what’s going on. This can only be achieved with
algorithms, which can take automatic action at the right moment.

Apple Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana
like digital personal assistants are making use of Machine Learning for speech
recognition to become smarter & creative, knowing more about you and your
needs

By connecting the sensors and systems in each of their elevators to the cloud, ThyssenKrupp, a Garman
Elevator Manufacturer, has been able to move beyond preventative maintenance to
offer predictive and preemptive services, a service that has not been possible
before in the elevator industry.

Today after 56 years even Barbie dollis going to become interactive and internet connected, that can
talk to children and respond to their questions.

At the end
Machine Learning helps make sense of digital tide, which we are generating and
helping the humanity do better.

Saturday, 12 September 2015

Do you remember
Captain James Kirk using his wrist watch to communicate with the crew of the
Starship Enterprise back in 1966?

Today, almost
after 50 years, it has finally become a reality!

Digital disruption is occurring in all business functions all around the world.
Wearables are becoming mainstream and disrupting almost every industry, with
the biggest impact being seen in customer service, healthcare and manufacturing.

Wearables currently
stand at the stage where smartphones were back in 2007. Apple had just launched
iPhone and the App store, but nobody could envision the vast range of
applications that would soon become available. At that point, the iPhone was just
considered to be a better phone, a music repository and a way to browse the web.

That is now a thing
of the past.

Today,
wearables come in various forms, like smart watches, health trackers, Google Glass,
interactive clothing, gesture controllers and list goes on. With wearables, we can
enter into an exciting new realm of augmented reality, with an enhanced
experience of what we see, hear and touch.

Insurers are
using wearables like Google Glass to record claims information in the field in
order to process them faster.

In healthcare,
implanted bio sensors can capture and transmit health data, from heart rate and
blood oxygen levels, to glucose sensors — to help identify risks and make diagnoses.

Smart watches can
alert users when their blood sugar is low or if they have an irregular
heartbeat. With wearables, anyone can carry a personal trainer on their body at
all times.

Here are some other
examples of wearables in our lives today:

ADAMM is a wearable
technology that provides a complete solution for managing your asthma. It collects
data on cough counting, respiration and heart rate, along with medication
reminders provided in an app or online portal for accessing your daily status
from anywhere.

If you or
someone you know suffers from lower back pain, Valedo may
be a solution. The device attaches to a person’s back and uses smart sensors that
communicate with a companion app to guide the user through a series of
therapeutic exercises.

Helius by Proteus
Digital Health is the
first-ever digestible microchip, and is used to detect when a patient takes
their medication. The data is transmitted to a companion app, enabling doctors
and caregivers to tell if the person is taking their prescribed medicines at
the correct time.

Physicians atIndiana
University Health Methodist Hospitalused Google Glass to perform a surgery
to help remove a tumor and reconstruct an abdominal wall. Some hospitals are hoping
to improve training by using wearable cameras to stream and record live
surgeries as seen through the eyes of a surgeon.

Disney has developed the wearable MagicBand,
a wrist band capable of monitoring visitors and collecting data about their
behavior in theme parks. It also enables visitors to pay for food or
merchandise, access hotel rooms, manage tickets, and skip the lines at popular
attractions.

Nymi is a biometric security wristband that could
someday replace all your passwords and keys.

These
wearables have the potential to make our lives healthy, more secure, and more
convenient — but there are a number of challenges which need to be resolved soon.

Sooner or later, all of us are
identified by the data we generate, and wearables represent a quantum leap in
the type and quantity of data collected — which is both an interesting and a scary
proposition.

As wearables become more mainstream, consumers need to be
aware of what data is shared,
which third parties have access to it, and what they will do with that
information.

Thursday, 19 March 2015

Digital disruption is happening
everywhere you look. It is impacting businesses of any size, in any industry,
market and geography.

Digital technology is changing the way we socialize,
communicate, research, learn and work.

If organizations do not adapt to
this fast-changing paradigm, then extinction may be closer than they think!

Digital technologies overwhelmed
Kodak, a true titan of the film business. Other big brands like Borders,
Circuit City and Blockbuster suffered the same fate. The dominance of
Blackberry and Nokia was overshadowed by Apple and Android smartphones.

According to a report entitled “The
Future of Business is Digital” by Nigel Fenwick of Forrester
Research, to survive this digital extinction, businesses must integrate digital
practices into their entire business models, from customer experience to
internal operations.

There are only a handful of
leaders who have successfully managed to turn the tables on these disruptive
forces and breathe new life into their companies.

Nike transformed from a sneaker
company to a digital sports licensing company.

The Sprint“Ninja” training program
encourages employee engagement and enables outreach to thousands of
customers they don’t hear from in formal channels, or can’t respond to
through social media.

AT&T is entering the home
security market with its Digital Life service, enabling customers
to remotely control everything in the home, from alarms to lights to door
locks.

Starbucks overcame a commodity product
like coffee by designing a unique digital experience for customers via Mystarbucksidea.com where
customers can share, discuss and vote on ideas to make their digital
experience with Starbucks richer. They now have a bank of 200,000+ ideas
to implement from.

Many businesses get stuck on
enhancing efficiency and decreasing costs, as opposed to taking risks to
innovate and boost agility.

To avoid digital extinction,
successful organizations have adopted the following broad steps:

Modernize their legacy systems to address real time on demand data requests

Today’s consumer expects easy
access to information anytime, anywhere, on any device. To successfully deliver
this digital expectation, enterprises must understand their customers as
people, not transactions.

A great example of this deeper
understanding is Starwood hotels, who analyzed customer data and launched nine
separate brands, segmented by affordability ranging from value brands like
“Four Points by Sheraton” and “Westin” to its “Luxury Collection” and “St.
Regis” properties.

This demonstrates that although
customers may not be able to completely control their journey, businesses need
to carefully map the customer journey and be present where they are. In
addition, digital transformation provides more real-time engagement platforms
to acquire, retain, and grow consumers than traditional models.

Enterprises that adapt, evolve and
exploit this new digital reality will thrive, while those that do not, will be
lost to the sands of time like Dinosaur !!